Culturally adapted mathematics education with ActiveMath

Abstract

Although it may seem that mathematics education material does not need any enculturation, the opposite is true. We report the results of a case study in several European countries and describe the different dimensions in which mathematics educational material has to be adapted to the cultural context of the learner. We describe the knowledge representation and mechanisms through which the user-adaptive learning platform ActiveMath realizes those adaptations to the language, countries, and communities of practice.

Notes

Acknowledgments

This publication was supported by funding from the EU for the projects LeActiveMath (FP6-507826) and ActiveMath-EU (2006-4533/001-ELEB14) and Intergeo (ECP-2006-EDU-410016). We thank our partners who indicated the cultural differences in the first place. We also thank Jürgen Schmitt from Klett-Verlag for his input about variability in the regions of German Federal States. For additional aspects to be presented, we like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this article.